Japanese film maker - see article [http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies/iimura.chin.pdf see article] </br>

Japanese film maker - see article [http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies/iimura.chin.pdf see article] </br>

+

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'''Heliotrope'''

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An arrangement of mirrors for reflecting sunlight from a distant point to an observation station.</br>

==Page 1000==

==Page 1000==

Revision as of 00:33, 27 June 2009

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Page 983

Endnote 3

cardioid
In geometry, a cardioid is a plane curve produced by tracing the path of a chosen point of a circle which rolls around a fixed circle. The cardioid shape of E.T.A. has one cusp, i.e., a point on the curve that is not smooth. The r referred to by the narrator here is the radius of the moving circle.

Übermensch
German for "superhuman"

Brandeis
Brandeis is a Jewish-founded university in Waltham, Mass., about nine miles west of Boston, named for Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941) the first Jewish Supreme Court justice.

Endnote 5

N.B.
abbreviation for Latin nota bene, i.e., "note well," stated before an important example or corollary point

Endnote 5a

nystagmus
involuntary eye movement

entrepôt
French for "warehouse," this is where foreign merchandise can be purchased duty-free

loquacity
talkativeness

Endnote 6

Halcion (still available in Canada, unbelievably, still)
It's also still available here, though the U.K. has banned it since 1991.

Page 984

Endnote 7

bevelling
Here meaning "smoothed out" and misspelled, beveling is the making of 45º angles where perpendiculars meet.

Endnote 8

Endnote 8a

Muscimole
another mushroom-based hallucinogen, like psilocybin

DDMS
dibromododecenyl methylsulfimide

DMSO
dimethylsulfoxide

Endnote 8 (cont'd)

dickies
As a dickie is designed to give the appearance of wearing a tie, Wallace uses this word here to deal with drugs that mimic the effects of other drugs.

Endnote 12a

"...Continental Controlled Substances Act of Y.T.M.P., O.N.A.N.D.E.A.'s hierarchy of analgesics/antipyretics/axiolytics..."
There is no such act, obviously. Y.T.M.P. is Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. The second acronym is Organization of North American Nations Drug Enforcement Agency. Analgesics are painkillers. Antipyretics are fever-reducing drugs, and anxiolytics are anxiety-reducing drugs.

Endnote 13

Quo Vadis
Latin: Where are you going? Famously asked of Jesus by Peter when the former was on his way to be crucified. See here. Also a novel and film by that name were made.

Page 985

Endnote 17

datum
piece of information

Endnote 19

French: A person of terrible importance

Endnote 21

Q.v.
Latin abbreviation for quod vide ("which see"), used to direct a reader elsewhere in a book. Here we are directed to...

Endnote 23

U.S.D.D.
United States Department of Defense

Endnote 24

meniscus
a lens with a crescent-shaped section

soliloquzied
spoken to oneself

incunabular
early stages of something

D W Griffith
Film Director whose films include 'Tolerance' and 'Birth of a Nation'

Page 1007

proviso
a clause, usually in a document, making a stipulation or qualification

"...isn't even iambic, much less quatrameter/trimeter..."
This is to say that the poetry of Dickinson is not in iambic pentameter, also known as verse. This is the style of poetry Shakespeare is written in ("Now is the winter of our discontent") -- ten syllables, and five iambs (feet, or beats) per line (thus pentameter). Quatrameter/trimeter would be the rhythm scheme of "Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Marry Had a Little Lamb."

dink
a synonym for a drop shot, which in tennis is a light tap just over the net

Page 1008

obverse
the more conspicuous of two possible choices

seraphic
like an angel

lascivious
appealing to sexual tastes

mesmerized
hypnotized

skitter
to move rapidly along a surface

knight-errant
a knight on a quest to prove his chivalry

Page 1009

Ainsi
French: so to speak

breviary
a prayer and hymn book

"Kitchens and heat..."
which is to say, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen

Page 1010

Gloeckner
German for "ringer," taking that in either of the meanings it has in English

"Dickinson's about as Transcendalist as Poe."
which is to say, not at all

Page 1011

R.C.M.P.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy (1901-1967) was an American singer and movie star. As far as what he looked like, see right.

Droll
whimsically comic

Page 1012

nanomicroscopy
the looking at extremely small things (nano- being the prefix for "one-billionth") through a microscope

Thevet
This is probably a reference to André de Thevet (1502-1590), a French priest and explorer. Though never in Canada, he relied on French-Canadian explorers' work for his own voyages to South America.

"...the 5 on the French Achievement boards..."
The highest possible score on the French Advanced Placement Exam (for which one can receive college credit) is 5.

Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740-1795), was the Scottish biographer of Samuel Johnson.

E cup
a very large breast size

acuity
acuteness of perception

in utero
in the womb

thalidomide
a drug developed to treat morning sickness in pregnant women that ended up causing babies to be born missing limbs

Condé Nast
one of the largest magazine publishers in the country, owned by Advance Publications (the Newhouse family) and founded by Condé Montrose Nast (1873-1942), an American publisher

deform
here meaning simply "to spoil"

persona
a fictional identity created for a person, narrator in a book, etc.

du
French: of the (masculine)

Page 1013

Meech Lake
a lake in Gatineau Park, near Chelsea, Québec

Parizeau
This is probably Jacques Parizeau (born 1930), a former Premier of Québec and proponent of Québecois sovereignty.

UV-booth
UV standing for ultraviolet (as in light), this is probably a tanning booth.

Page 1014

"Nous v. La Plupart Toujours"
French: Us versus the majority always

Lesotho
a kingdom of southern Africa, existing as an enclave entirely within the Republic of South Africa

SOUTHAF
This is the Union of South Africa, which was formed in 1910 as a British colony and tried to annex Lesotho to it. Because of the imposition of apartheid laws in S. Africa, the annexation failed.

antebellum
before the war, here the U.S. Civil War

Endnote 110h

Gallic
French

Page 1014 (cont'd)

Anglophone
English-speaking

Plains of Abraham
a reference to the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, part of the French and Indian Wars, which ended in a decisive British victory of the French

Endnote 110i

'La Guerre des Britanniques et des Sauvages'
French: The War of the British and the Savages

Page 1016

weedy
scrawny; Hal is probably using it to mean "thin," as in a line of argumentation

Brazilian Nuevo Contras
These would be "new" contras, the old ones having been U.S.-funded anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

'The Noie Störkrafts? Shining Path's? The Belgian CCC's?Noie Störkraft is Swedish "New Great Power"; it does not appear to be a new organization, though Störkraft is the name of a skinhead band from Sweden. The Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso in Spanish) is the Communist Party of Peru, which has waged guerrilla warfare against the Peruvian government since 1980. CCC is a French acronym for Communist Combatant Cells; they were eliminated as a terrorist group in 1986.

Page 1021

anapestic
An anapest is a three-syllable word where the emphasis is one last syllable. "Anapest" is an anapest.

Endnote 145 · Found Drama

An invented, non-existent faux-academic style of film on which James O. Incandenza lectured and received artistic grants, created to lampoon the academic film theory community. Found Drama was not captured on film; rather, Incandenza and close friends "got out a Boston metro phone book and tore a White Pages page out at random and thumbtacked it to the wall and then [Incandenza] would throw a dart at it from across the room. ... And the name it hit becomes the subject of the Found Drama. And whatever happens to the protagonist with the name you hit with the dart for ... the next hour and a half is the Drama."

Page 1067

armamentarium
an arsenal, particularly used by physicians to refer to drugs or treatments

callow
immature; inexperienced

dinkle
a euphemism for "penis"

Page 1068

three-setter
a tennis game ending in three sets, rather than five, because one player has gone up 3 to 0

cavalier
disdainful; unceremonious

burr
here used to mean "irritant"

Page 1069

canvas restraint-wrap
straitjacket

catgut
This is "a strong cord made by twisting the dried intestines of animals, as sheep, used in stringing musical instruments and tennis rackets, for surgical sutures, etc." (Random House Unabridged Dictionary).

"...his late great Da's..."
Clearly Pemulis has no idea that his brother was molested by their father.

A and G, T and C
adenine and guanine, thymine and cytosine, the compounds that make up DNA

Csíkszentmihályi
The name may be taken from Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (born 1934), a prominent Hungarian-American psychologist. His son Christopher is on the faculty at MIT.

lemma
a proven statement used as a step in a mathematical proof

Boardman MN
a town about 40 miles west-northwest of the Twin Cities

Page 1072

"Leap like a knight of faith . . ."

A reference to Soren Kierkegaard's knight of faith. Kierkegaard, a theologian and philosopher, didn't think there could be any logical justification for believing in God. Instead the believer is required to take a leap of faith, so called because he (the believer) has no evidence for his convictions and thus must always, on some rational level, doubt them. In fact to Kierkegaard doubt defines faith, because if there were no doubt no leap of faith would be required in the first place, much like it doesn't require a leap of faith for you to believe you're actually reading this wikipedia entry right now, or that I'm not an alien sub rosa manipulating your mind for my own purposes.

"...Peano, Leibniz, Hilbert..."
Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) was an Italian mathematician. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German polymath and one of the creators of calculus. David Hilbert (1862-1943) was a German mathematician.

"...Fourier, Gauss, LaPlace, Rickey..."
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) was a French mathematician and physicist. Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) was a German mathematician. Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (1749-1827) was a French mathematician and astronomer. Rickey would seem to refer to V. Frederick Rickey, though he is contemporary while the other named men are not.

"...Wiener, Reimann, Frege, Green..."
Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) was an American mathematician. Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) was a German mathematician. Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was a German mathematician and logician. Green is probably George Green (1793-1841), English mathematician and physicist.